March 2008

March 29, 2008

Faculty, students, parents, security contractors, coalition soldiers, and -- above all -- graduates, thank you so much for choosing me as your commencement speaker. I'd like to congratulate the efforts of my rivals for this honor. While I realize that a majority of you voted for someone else to address you today, I applaud your decision to take a pause from the rioting that seemed to coincide with the decisive supervotes cast by the dean of students and academic department heads. Let this one-hour break serve as a glimpse of the healing that is sure to come to your campus and your obstinately shattered nation.

Graduates, they said this day could not come. They cynically said that Middle Easterners could not earn a Ph.D. in three months. They said Halliburton Democracy University's million-dollar-per-student cost could not be justified. Instead, today, thanks to you, HDU Baghdad has proved the cynics wrong. HDU today stands as a beacon for the future of global education.

Just three months ago some of you were firebrand clerics. Some were militia leaders. Others were extremists, insurgents, terrorist masterminds, smugglers, warlords. Today you stand before me as the future elected leaders of your country. But there is a pernicious threat to your destiny as elected peacemakers. That threat is democracy. Democracy, put simply, is the greatest obstacle to our dream of spreading democracy around the Middle East and around the world.

I hope you've learned in your studies here at HDU Baghdad about the unruly, unthinking beasts known as elections. Elections are all too eager to devour visionary leaders. Elections distort and distort and distort until an elaborate, self-aggrandizing, recurring misstatement can seem like a lie.

But there is hope. I'm here today to put you on the path to that hope.

I've entitled my remarks "Lessons From a Mature Democracy." Think of me as a big sister, sitting beside you on your bunk bed and telling it to you like it is.

We can't even start, though, until you look into your hearts and assess whether you possess the determination needed to run for office. You need, above everything else, to know that an election is all about you. The timid and the treacherous who litter your path will try to set up barricades. They'll use buzzwords like "rules" and "honesty" and "opportunistic." They'll put on grim faces and spew meaningless phrases like "for the good of the party" or "for the good of the country" or "Until this moment, Senator, I think I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"

I invite you to take inspiration from my own life. A rise to political office need not abide by the laws of physics. Gravity is inevitable. We're stuck with it. But only fools and cowards permit themselves to remain earthbound due to manmade forces such as pledged delegates or majority rule or unanimous decisions by supreme courts. There is always a way to win. So remember: An election is always, in the end, all about you.

For your sake, I am hoping that Arabic has a word for "disenfranchise." I don't know where I'd be without that precious word. Hear this. The language of democracy, inclusion, and fairness represents the most reliable way to overcome an unfavorable electoral outcome.

My own presidential election offers some excellent examples of this principle at work. I am living proof that "disenfranchise" can be employed to convince millions of people that it would be undemocratic not to count the results of an election in which mine was the only name on the ballot.

When my nomination was a virtual mathematical impossibility, "disenfranchise" gave me what I needed to persuade the voters in the last of America's primary states that it would be undemocratic if I dropped out of the race. That was when I learned the true power of the word. Every morning I'd rise expecting my fellow Americans to wake up to the fact that nobody had shrieked "disenfranchisement!!!" when the original Democratic field shrunk by half-a-dozen candidates several weeks before the voters of states like Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and North Carolina got a chance to cast their ballots. But nobody ever called me on it. And why would they? Come on. Show of hands, graduates. Raise your hand if you remember Chris Dodd. Joe Biden? John Edwards? Dennis Kucinich? Bill Richardson? Tom Vilsack? Yeah. Neither do I.

Another buzzword you'll hear is "divisive." Jam your fingers in your ears when they trot this one out.

If your opponent saves his candidacy by giving a speech that fills people with hope that they might overcome generations of ethnic strife, sectarian hatreds, or whatever, "divisive" is a word that can distract you from what needs to be done. "Divisive" will keep you from finding ways to re-open old wounds as often as is needed to make your opponent seem unelectable. This takes discipline and, of course, a steadfast mindfulness that the election is all about you. But as I look out on the smiling, hopeful faces of this graduating class, I feel inspired and confident that at least one of you will find a way to do what needs to be done.

Finally, a word about political snubs. Sometimes a longtime political ally will decide, for his own mystifying reasons, that he should endorse your opponent. When that happens, you'll want to stay silent on the matter. Don't give him the satisfaction. Most importantly, maintain your silence when one of your prominent supporters compares your former ally to whichever person is the most reviled traitor in the history of your own religious tradition. In my tradition, the comparison would be to someone called Judas. You'll have to work out the details of how to implement this principle here in Iraq. We've been briefed constantly on the Koran. So I haven't really seen the need to read it myself.

There's much more I could share. But I want to allow time for refreshments before you return to your rioting. Thank you so much for your attention. With luck, hard work, and total dedication to the ideas I've outlined here, someone in this graduating class will soon become the leader of this godforsaken place. I look forward to meeting with that person one-on-one. Without preconditions.

Congratulations, graduates. May God bless the United States of America.

March 07, 2008

History will hate us if we allow ourselves to be conned by Hillary Clinton's win-at-all-costs, facts-don't-matter, feed-the-fear tactics. We seem dangerously close to squandering something I never expected to get: a chance to fundamentally change the arithmetic of American elections.

A natural, overwhelming Democratic majority is hibernating in the United States today. These are people who care but don't vote, who need government but don't trust any politician to deliver on promises of help. These folks are struggling daily. They would find universal national healthcare as obvious and uncontroversial as municipal running water.

The hibernating masses that are essential to progress in America are chiefly visible through their invisibility. They are the 35 percent of eligible voters who didn't even cast ballots in 1960, when we set the modern record for turnout in a presidential election.

I won't pretend that everyone who stays home would vote for a Democrat. And I'm not partisan enough to even wish that were the case.

I won't pretend that every hibernating citizen sits out elections for exactly the same reason. But I believe I know where low turnouts come from. I believe you do, too. We know this from chats with neighbors. We know this from jokes we've heard our whole lives. What we know is this: Americans -- the ones who do vote and especially the ones who don't vote -- believe politics is filthy.

He's never said it quite this way, but Senator Obama is essentially campaigning on the idea that politics doesn't need to be filthy. It's an idea that has roused a tiny fraction of the hibernators. Blinking in the glare of the winter sunlight, they are still not sure if Senator Obama means what he says.

This uncertainty -- the fragility of people's optimism -- is the only electoral asset the Clintons have left. Given that bankruptcy, Senator Clinton would have only one choice if she cared as much about America as she cares about herself. A person with a conscience would quit the race, search her soul, return to the Senate, dedicate herself to helping President Obama help Americans, and possibly try again – as a humble, positive, principled candidate -- in 2016.

That's harsh. I don't know Senator Clinton personally. So I can't legitimately claim she has no conscience whatsoever. But her campaign behavior is unconscionable. That much I can say. As a candidate, she does not follow even the most basic rules of integrity and decency I can count on from my seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son. My kids understand that people won't want to play with you anymore if you try to change the rules in the middle of a game. Senator Clinton's unseemly effort to seat delegates from a state where she alone kept her name on the ballot show her to be someone who'd soon find herself with no playmates if she showed up with Chutes and Ladders at an elementary school.

Even if we elect Senator Obama, there's no guarantee he'll rouse the rest of the hibernators or that he'll reward the ones who've awakened already. He has told us he is not a perfect person. He has told us he won't be a perfect president. Last week's fumble over the Canada/NAFTA stuff showed he is not a perfect candidate. But all human progress is the work of fallible human beings.

This election is not a referendum on whether a woman can be elected president. This election is not about whether an African-American can become president. This election has become a referendum on whether politics needs to be filthy.

Senator Clinton can win the nomination. If Senator McCain self-destructs, she might even be able to win the presidency. But she has shown she can only win by throwing "the kitchen sink." She can only win, in short, by proving again that politics is filthy. She can only win by telling the hibernators that they were chumps to wake up. A Democratic "victory" that sends the hibernators back to sleep can only yield an administration that comes and goes without bringing any durable progress to America's schools, its healthcare system, its foreign policy, and everything else that matters.